plastic pipe

[helen nightingale]

i am thinking of getting some plastic pipe for the loaches, as i have enjoyed seeing everyone's photos of their loaches stacked up in pipes. i reckon i will need the pipe to be at least 1.5" diameter. somethng that worries me is that pipe that size tends to be waste pipes, from what i have been told. i have no idea whether waste pipes would be made of food grade plastic/potable water plastic or not. the ones i looked at today didnt say. i wouldnt want any pipes to leach anything into the water

what sort of places have you lot bought your pipes from, and if anyone out there knows more about plumbing that i do, how can i tell if te plastic is safe?

i do feel quite dim asking this - it's probably quite obvious

[mickthefish]

waste pipes are fine Helen, on most pipeing it should have what it's made of printed on the side, any of the big diy places sell it.
ive just got some pipeing from my mate, cos it's the type that sinks rather than me havind to silicone or weight it down.

mick

[Emma Turner]

Hels,

The stuff Mick's talking about is fine, but any pipe that is designed for pond filtration or marine plumbing is suitable and all good aquatic stores should stock this. The Aquamedic grey piping (like what I used for my river tank manifolds) is available in various sizes, we carry it in stock up to 50mm diameter.

Emma

[helen nightingale]

ooh, grey is a good idea. the pipe would show less if i stuck my sand to it.

50mm is about 2", isnt it? that should be good for a chunky yoyo. does it sink? on second thoughts, maybe weighting any pipe down would be best. they are strong and destructive, the pipe could get snouted round all over the place if it doesnt have any extra weight on it

thanks for your advice Mick is there any type of plastic i should avoid? next time i got to a diy shop i will have to squint through the packets

[Emma Turner]

the pipe could get snouted round all over the place if it doesnt have any extra weight on it

Such a brilliant description, I can visualise this exactly!

How tall in the body are Betsy and Bertha? Would 2" cover it?

Emma

[jones57742]

Helen:

I believe that what you are after is PVC pipe which is probably what you are looking at. PVC is virtually inert and is used in many harsh environments the least of which is sanitary sewers.

TR

[wasserscheu]

I´ve just added a wastewater T-piece myself. Its made from PP(-H), those HTEM pipes may not be drinking water approved, but are save enough for our fish. However, some have gaskets attached to them - those gaskets are lubricated and according to my research that grease is not drinking-water save. So I removed the gasket and cleaned out the are that was lubricated (most likely was some harmless vaseline anyway).

I´ve bought some more of those waste water pipes, but did not get to water them yet... that T-piece stays very well by itself on the ground, I also have some sand in it, to the same level as the regular substrate (only 1/4 - 1/2" hight).

Btw, I just took pic´s of some of my PET-plant trays disolving ... hmmm ...

[adrea]

We have a whole PVC pipe system running through the bottom of our tank fully covered by gravel except for the 3 entrances where we have the gravel stuck on decoratively with aquarium silicon...

Our clowns love it; lol I kinda regret it sometimes because 99% of the time the only signs we have our clowns is their tails sticking out of the entrances... But it makes them happy and that is the most important.

If you decide to go for something more extensive and underground; we cannot clean our pipe system so easily (if we could run the pvc we have as our undergravel system completely strait it would be about 4 feet) so for sanitation we drilled holes in the bottom of the pvc pipe system and have it sitting over a thin layer of gravel which is over an under gravel filter. I try to vacuum out water from inside the pipe every once in a while and I also try and flush it out every once in a while with water changes but not much comes out so I think it is rather clean.

We have had the tunnel system in place for about 3 years now, and I think it really helped our fish deal with the stress of ich during a heavy outbreak we had during Christmas as they hid in there almost the whole time so they were somewhere dark (which I think reduced stress), away from the gravel where I think most of the free swimming ich hid waiting for a host and they didn't have anything rough to excessively flash against under there. The good thing too was not one fish has ever died in the pipe system. They always came out to die with the ich outbreak as well as with 1 or 2 new, and fairly young additions, that appeared to die for no reason a few weeks after we got them a few years ago. Unfortunately that just happens sometimes I guess; it is sad I have to know that but at least I know I do not have to worry about anyone hiding in there and dying. On the other hand we had a few platys disappear over night (which we suspect died of old age) and I am pretty sure the clowns drug the dead bodies into the tunnels. I would have rather that they had not eaten a dead tankmate just to be safe, and I am sure I could have stopped them from eating most of the fish at least had there not been a tunnel system .

We also had 1 clown that got super grumpy and nippy for about a month so I took a smaller shaped PVC with elbows on it and just hid it behind some driftwood with the entrances sticking out and now there is normally at least 1 or 2 clowns in there, and everything as calmed down since with the fin nipping...

Anywho that is my longwinded input!

[helen nightingale]

2" would be ideal size of pipe.

Andrea your pipe tunnels sounds lies they work really well for your fish. i enjoyed reading your post

thanks to you all for your advice. i am now feeling much more relaxed about getting the right sort of pipe